Last month, I wrote an article for the local magazine, Metromode, about the death of a close friend and how difficult it is to reconcile sorrow with humor. I retold the joke my friend would tell about a kid with Down syndrome trying to get on the bus. Wasn’t really that funny of a joke, actually, but the way in which it was told, and the internal grimacing one experiences during the telling was how it actumally became a funny joke.

I’ve been writing the “Last Word” column there for months and months now, and it’s no surprise that I was asked to write it again, but what was surprising was the enthusiasm with which people responded to the article this month.

Previously, I had written about class struggle, about pharmaceutical overuse, about politics–you name it, if it’s a combative concept, I enjoyed writing about it. And I almost never, ever heard much beyond the cursory “read your article, was well-written” from my friends. I imagine that has to do with the audience of this particular magazine–mostly younger gay men. And that is, really, what troubles me.

It seems my demographic is typically politically-unmotivated, lackadaisical about economic disparity, and eager to leap on the newest trends, regardless of cost. I don’t really know how best to attack that. Seems the general approach is to leave it to someone else, wait for it to remedy itself.

In this charged atmosphere, mere months from an election in which we shall pick a new President, in an era where civil rights are under a more focused attack than in nearly any other time of world history, certainly in any other time in American history, you’d think that we as a community would be more interested in the goings on in Washington, D.C. and in the Fortune 500 boardrooms across America.

But we’re not.

And, tragically, it’s not just my community that doesn’t really care. In 2006, roughly 68% of eligible adults in Colorado cast a ballot. If I had gotten a 68% on a test while I was in high school or something, I’m sure I would’ve been if not beaten, then at least scolded by my parents. Perhaps grounded. Regardless, it wouldn’t have merely been accepted as a fact of life by parents who want me to succeed. No, I would’ve been forced to do better.

But we Americans… well, we’re still waiting for something, I guess.